Michelle L. Rusk's Blog, page 8
December 11, 2023
November 29, 2023
November 27, 2023
Hostess Lessons
When I was growing up, my parents didn’t usually have people like neighbors over for meals as my first husband’s family did. I learned after my dad died that my dad had been close to a neighbor who had died unexpectedly and my mom said he vowed never to be that close to a friend again. But what we didn’t have with neighbors, we definitely had with family. There were several gatherings each year with my mom’s side alone for holidays and other events.
Growing up, I know I didn’t think much about the hubbub and organizing that goes into these events. When we hosted, there was always extra cleaning to do (the cutouts in the dining room chairs that had be dusted were the worst) and my mom trying to perfect her green Jello mold and making it too late, getting frustrated because it wouldn’t set right.
The photo above is of Mom’s side in the family, taken in the late 1950s. I believe this was my mom’s college graduation and those are her aunts and uncles at the table. I chose this photo, however, because that’s my Grandma Zurawski in the background wearing the apron and holding a pot. And that’s her basement kitchen.
The house was built around 1950 and had a small kitchen, but it was deceiving because downstairs she had second kitchen– pantry, refrigerator, sink, and stove. all right next to the washer and dryer that look covered in this photo.
As we have entered this season of gathering together, this year I have been thinking so much about how I learned to host a party. While a lot of it came from trial and error of simply having a party in the first place, there were also things I learned from Mom and that she had learned from Grandma Zurawski. I can look back now and see that learning to host was part of growing up, of becoming an adult, of a family education of sorts.
But I also understand now that hosting a party is one of the most joyful parts of my life. To gather people in my house (the happiness that they are excited to come over for a party!) for a meal that I have made (or partly made if we’re having a pot luck) takes time and planning. Yet it’s about sharing with others. And in life, sharing a meal with others, breaking bread as we have often heard, is where we find joy and meaning.
How lucky I am that it’s been part of my life, too.
November 20, 2023
Thanksgiving Peace
I have never forgotten the pain of that first Thanksgiving without my sister Denise, the same one that was also our first without my maternal grandmother who had died just about six weeks before the holiday.
It was awkward; we all knew it was different. We got through it and in the ensuing years, as I began to speak publicly about suicide and grief, I also began to incorporate ways to not just survive the holiday season, but also make them meaningful, especially those first years without a loved one.
Within a family, each of us have a different story relating to our loved one, our relationship with them, and their death. That often means that when a holiday arrives, some family members are afraid to bring up the person and/or the loss while others want to talk about it.
To not speak of that person, makes it appear as if they never existed. But there might be too much pain for some people to speak of them. It’s important to find a place in the middle to meet.
I have heard of families who set a place at that table for that person; an acknowledgment that they still have a place in the family (as they do– and always will– no one can take away the memories you have with that person).
Through the years of speaking, I came to realize that a lit candle early in the day is a good way to diffuse that tension between family members. It’s a way of acknowledging the presence in some way of the deceased loved one, to remember that they are still part of the family, and a way that doesn’t mean everyone has to speak of them if it’s too painful.
I know many people are approaching their first holiday season without someone they love very much. No matter what road you are traveling in your life this Thanksgiving, may the day bring you peace and hope. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.
November 13, 2023
People We Call Family
My neighbor Basil used to say that sometimes the people who treat you better in life are the people who aren’t really your family. My friend LaRita told me once that she considered me her daughter, but that it was good we weren’t really related because that meant we would argue less.
People we call family.
When I worked on my doctorate in family studies, I became aware that this concept had a name- that sometimes in life we have people we aren’t biologically related to, but we call family.
LaRita Archibald quickly became one of those people the summer of 1993 when I was interning at USA Boxing at the United State Olympic Training Center. My sister Denise had just died a few months before and in the phone book I found the number for a local group of suicide survivors (what we now call the suicide bereaved).
It was LaRita’s number that I would be calling, the same message that stayed in her phone for what seems like forever.
Today is what would have been LaRita’s 92 birthday. I always call her on her birthday and yesterday I checked to make sure I had the date right (Facebook has made me lazy in that way– I don’t write it down and instead check a person’s profile). It was there that I found out LaRita had died on May 13, six months ago.
It’s hard to sit on the outside, to be one of those people we call family, because oftentimes we don’t know what has happened to someone as the family might not contact us. I have quite a few people in my life who would tell you I am family, but sometimes when they’ve died, unless I see an obituary or the family posts somewhere on social media, I don’t know unless an invitation is returned in the family (that happened two years ago with my friend Sally– we had been out of town when she died so I didn’t see the obituary).
We had a great weekend- Greg’s team won the girls soccer state championship, my Chelle Summer Holiday event was the best one I’ve had yet, but this excitement is tempered today by the news of LaRita’s death. I’m not just grieving the loss of my friend, but also of not knowing when it happened.
I know that LaRita was tired, that her body was failing her– she told me so when we talked on her birthday last year. Her husband Eldon had died a few years before. She had to carry around an oxygen tank to breathe. She didn’t have the energy to do things she once did. She had lost two children, one to suicide, one to an illness that quite honestly could have been prevented (something that I know she struggled with).
But she was such a part of thirty years of my life, more than half my life. She so badly wanted to come to my wedding when married Greg but no one would make the trip to Albuquerque with her and she was past the point in her life she felt safe enough to drive alone. We had always visited each other and I know she wanted me to visit more, that she was a bit envious we went to LA to see the Blooms instead of going north to see her (I tried to explain it was because they had the ocean).
I have so much more to say, but I think that’s where I’ll stop today. She had an enormous influence on much of my adult life, being that I was 21 when we met. Perhaps more blogs will come from it, particularly one about a major influence she still has to this day. Sometimes I need to travel the road a little to sort it out. Or swim some laps.
I’ll do that now. I know she is at peace, she is with Eldon, her parents, and her children Kent and Karen. But I will always miss the sound of her voice, of the funny things she would tell me. And the love she gave to me.
November 9, 2023
Chelle Summer Cover Up Tunics
If you haven’t met the Chelle Summer coverup tunics, now’s your chance in this week’s video.
November 6, 2023
Balancing Life Inside and Outside the Bubble
When the pandemic began in late winter 2020, my research job had just ended. We knew it was coming for a year and we had planned for it. But we also had planned for me to focus on Chelle Summer– which included selling at events in the Los Angeles area. The pandemic obviously changed our plans. While I had plenty of time to sew and create, what I didn’t have was the income that I hoped for.
Several years later, it’s been a roller coaster ride of not knowing what will happen on multiple fronts as everything keeps changing. I’m definitely not where I wanted to be and I’m finding myself having to continually reconfigure what I’m doing for Chelle Summer as things that worked before, don’t work now, and new opportunities arise, but not always ones that take off either.
In the midst of this, I’m also still navigating a new routine. Because of the pandemic, while I had Greg at home with me and then my neighborhood community that I see when I’m out running in the morning and then run-walking the dogs, there weren’t many other social opportunities or obligations. That allowed me to stay in my creative bubble longer and more often.
I believe that I am a balance of an extrovert and introvert. I need time with people, but I also need time alone. Now that we seem to be moving at double speed socially to make up for lost time, my challenge has been to figure out how to create (writing, sewing, painting) while also having enough time to be social and for life’s routine.
At first, I thought it was just me, that there was something wrong with me that I felt so overwhelmed because I wanted to create more, but have had to engage more socially. Then, as I took a little time, to reflect back on the past few years, I realized it was because I never had a chance to adjust to life in the new routine without the job. Instead, the pandemic thrust a different routine into life.
While we’re all weathering some sort of continued change in our lives, it seems to me that the first step to lessening how overwhelming it can be is that awareness of what it stems from. As I have found that, I know the next step is taking things slowly, setting goals, and then reconfiguring them as they fit or don’t fit into my bubble and the life that revolves around it.
